According to a report by the Central Statistics Organization(CSO), Afghanistan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) showed a promising growth for the past fiscal year at 6.4%.

Standing at USD 21.2bn, the figure brings some hope and optimism to the rather bleak Afghan economy’s future.

CSO President Shir Mohammad Jamizada said inflation rate was down to 5.6% from 2012′s 6.4%.

He added Afghanistan witnessed an increase of USD 100mn in exports and decrease of over USD 300mn in imports of goods in 2013.

As per the report, about 5.2mn tons of wheat crops were produced last year, indicating a 2.4% increase from 2012.

The report estimates the country’s population at 28.1mn including 1.5mn nomads.

The report also revealed education and health data which showed that the attainment of government employee indicates that totally 277 PhD, 3,793 MA/M.Sc., 45,972 BA/B.Sc., and 245,523 persons below BA/B.Sc. of the civil service employees were working in the government offices.

The Ministry of Education (MoE) revealed that 9 million students were enrolled in the primary, secondary, high school, vocational high schools, technical vocational institutes, teacher training institutions and religious education. Out of above mentioned figure, 8.8 million were enrolled in government general education and 226338 in private education institutions, which compared to previous year, showed 11.3 percent increase. Total numbers of teacher were 224,469 last year. (Afghanistan Times)

Based on yearbook, total number of students of state-run and private higher education institutions was 204,875 last year, an increase of 27.4 per cent compared to the year before.

According to the report, 2,106 health centers were operational countrywide, a 5 per cent increase in number. But still there are 5 beds and 3 medical doctors for each 10,000 persons. As many as 1,529 people contracted AIDs last year, which shows 11 per cent rise as compared to the year before that.